


Very tired Timelord

by millygal



Series: Further.... [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 03:26:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millygal/pseuds/millygal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twisted idea of his true north.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Very tired Timelord

Nine hundred years.

Legs crossed at the ankle, All stars propped upon the control panel.

Ten Different faces.

Book in hand, glasses perched at the very tip of his nose.

Thirty truly amazing companions

Shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, tie hanging loose about his neck.

One very tired Time Lord

****

"Just five minutes Rose, I just want five minutes of peace and quiet. Even a Time Lord needs to recharge his batteries."

Liar!

And so she'd left him to it. Gracing him with a gentle and all too knowing smile. Clever girl that one, didn't miss a trick.

He knew that she knew he wasn't really reading the Dicken's propped against his knees. He also knew that she would not pry, would not ask why or if he was okay. Just drift away towards her room and wait for him to come to her. Bounding in with another destination already mapped out. Another great adventure to undertake.

He really did love that girl.  
And it scared the living shit out of him.

She knew him in a way he couldn't even know himself.

If he was tired she told him that she needed to sleep.

If he was hungry she asked him to make her a spot of toast.

If he was hurting she would open her arms and ask him for a little comfort.

Never one to probe or poke about in his feelings, never asking what he wanted, already knowing what he needed.

That was Rose.

She was a source of such great joy and such great sorrow.

He was nine hundred and change, had two hearts and a brain so full of knowledge that sometimes he feared it might burst. He was an alien. And yet he'd never felt so human in all his life.

He measured everything in pockets of time. In those nine centuries he had seen stars born and galaxies die, civilisations rise up and his own kind disappear. Never staying in one place or sticking around after the fact. He was more like Jack than he liked to admit. Every day seemed to be 'volcano day'.

Yet from the minute he'd taken Rose Tyler's hand in that basement he'd wanted to stop the flow of time, allow himself these few precious moments to watch her grow, enjoy her change into the woman he could see flourishing behind those crystalline eyes.

He'd never really put much stock in emotions, always bottling them up or locking them away. He'd lived too long and seen too much to allow himself to feel every passing, mourn every ending. Maybe that was why he could practically taste his love for this one. It had become a physical being, something he could almost reach out and touch. When she walked into a room he could sense her, not just in the , "I'm an all knowing all seeing lord of time", way, but right deep down in his gut. A gentle tug from just behind his navel, an internal awareness, his blood flowed that little bit faster when she was around.

A twisted idea of his true north.

He'd always been two steps ahead of every one else, there wasn't a being in the universe that could out smart him but five minutes in Rose Tyler's presence left him flailing, he'd come to understand just how a 15 year old boy felt when asking his first crush out for chips.

The truly human way in which his body reacted to her left him completely at a loss. His palms would sweat, his hearts raced and he could never quite catch his breath. It was baffling, baffling and bloody frightening.

He found himself flirting, actually flirting, he'd not done that before, not with any companion. Oh he'd kissed Grace, because he'd felt it was the right thing to do, she seemed to expect it and who was he to complain. After all he hadn't been sticking around long enough to worry about the consequences.

He had loved Sarah-Jane, but he'd let her go, pushed her away in fact, because he'd known what would have happened if they'd travelled down that road. He couldn't offer Sarah any kind of life then and he couldn't offer one to Rose now and still he held on. Stubbornly clinging to this pretty little human child. She wasn't a child anymore though, far from it, she'd changed and adapted from the second she'd come into his life, taking the little that he had to give and doing the best with it that she could.

He'd even told her, practically spelling it out for her. Hoping she would make the decision he knew he could not, the decision to walk away before they both got burned.

"I don't age, I regenerate, but humans decay. You wither and you die!"

"Imagine watching that happen to someone that you...."

"You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you."

But it had hurt, oh it had hurt. He'd wanted to take her in his arms and make promises he knew he couldn't ever keep. The look in those beautiful eyes had almost broken him, such sadness and yet still so much love. How could one tiny human heart hold so much without shattering, she had such a capacity to love and it made him want to weep.

But that was Rose, she loved without reserve, she gave herself completely to him even though he barely offered her crumbs, scraps from his table, he'd let her in so far and then shut the door.

Perhaps...

She'd held the key to his heart for so long, perhaps it was time to let her use it.

She already owned him, he'd be hers for the rest of his 13 lives, regardless of the others that would inevitably walk the TARDIS's corridors. He was tired, so very tired of telling himself it couldn't or shouldn't be. She would age and she would die, she may even leave him, but for a few moments in time she would be his.

Would it hurt any less if he didn't tell her how he burned for her?. How he couldn't get through a day without imagining her beside him, beneath him, surrounding him.

He was a Time Lord, the last Time Lord and yet he could not stop time passing him by. Instead of allowing this precious gift to slip through his fingers maybe he should let it be just that...a gift. So few people really got the chance to love with all their being, perhaps he should be allowed this one chance.

His hearts feeling lighter than they had in weeks, he closed his book and stood. Running long fingers through already unruly hair, he set off towards Rose's room.

****

She looked up from her magazine to find a smiling Doctor drumming his fingers almost impatiently on her door.

Something seemed changed, almost as though he'd come to some wonderful conclusion, solved an unsolvable equation or done something truly outstanding. He had that smug look on his face, the one that made her want to smack him up back of the head and kiss him all at once. Such a cheeky grin this one, quite adorable. Not that she'd ever tell him that, he'd never let her live it down.

"So, you had enough of the peace an' quiet then Doctor?"

"Oh yes, definitely had enough quiet, time for a bit of noise don't you think."

She couldn't help but grin at that, he was always so enthusiastic, dragging her from place to place with a childlike glee. He had such a unique energy to him, it was so very infectious.

"So, where we going this time then?"

Eyes sparkling with warmth and something she couldn't quite put her finger on, he held her gaze and smiled a slow soft smile.

"Further then we've ever gone before."


End file.
